How to Get Motivated and Become a Workout Beast

There is no doubt that staying committed to a workout schedule is difficult. Life is so busy! Need to work on that project! Have to stay late at work! Just want to sleep! There are countless reasons to skip workouts, and very draining to give 110% every time. Finding workout motivation is a struggle to everyone, but were there's a will, there's a way. There is no sure fire way to get someone up and going to the next level, but each individual will have some trigger that will send them into high gear, it is just a struggle to find that trigger. Try some of these methods and get ready to push yourself harder then ever before and reach the next level.

The first act to achieve is to plan out your goals. Think about what you want to achieve, what you really want to achieve, and write it down. Write down these goals on post its and place them throughout your room, house, and car. The mirror in your bathroom and the refrigerator door are great places because you will see them a few times a day there. Make sure your goals are specific; if you want to get stronger than to what lifts and how much weight will your lift? planning on building muscle then plan in inches and pounds, and the same inches and pounds guidelines apply to weight loss, measure your vertical now and decide how many more inches you want to increase if you want to jump higher, and so on. Put a time table on the goals, create goals for the next 12, 6, and 3 months. Do not plan on goals you want to "eventually" get, but actually give yourself a deadline. The better your goals are written the easier it will be to find motivation to work harder.

Another strategy is to focus and a short term (4 weeks or less) goal. Hopefully you have all your long term goals listed out and not just in your head. But too often people dream of the end result that will take a long time to reach. Often, a short term goal is needed to really spark a fire of motivation inside you. Write it down, put it on your bathroom mirror or fridge where you will constantly be reminded of it. Say you want to add 100 pounds to your max bench press by next season in a few months, make a short term goal of adding 20 pounds to your max in 4 weeks. The days you want to slack off will be the critical times to see these goals written down to get you back on track. Work hard for the next four weeks, and think about that short term goal every day. Then when you reach it, set another goal for the not so distant future. After a few rounds of these short term goals, your former long term goals will be right around the corner.

One other strategy is to get another person to train with you. get some workout motivation form each other and climb to the next level together. Chances are a teammate or friend would be excited to work together. Sit down with your new training partner and plan everything: plan what goals you want to get out of it, plan where you will train, plan for how many days a week you'll workout, plan any other variables you think of. Put it all in writing and refer back to these plans often. This will work because you are now accountable not only to yourself but to your partner as well and you are not going to let down someone else. Make it clear that this time is dedicated training time, not social time to goof off or gossip. If finding a partner and listing out all these plans sounds a bit over your head, find a coach or trainer to take help you out and really push you during workouts. Coaches are great at motivating you and anyone would be surprised at how much harder they will work for a coach than alone.

An additional action would be to find some motivational quotes that really speak to you and use it. Write them down and hand them on the fridge right below your goals. Seeing a motivational quote with your goal in mind will make it personal to you and that it is your time to make your dreams a reality. Russell Wilson used the quote "Why not you?" to himself and "Why not us?" to his team en route to the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl victory. If it works for him in the NFL, surely you can find motivation in yourself to get going. One of super trainer Todd Durkin's quotes right now is "Ready, fire aim!" meaning to get up and take some action. Adjust and correct your track as you go, but no matter what get up and do something. Get to the gym, make it to practice, go for that run; just go do something! Find videos of motivational speakers, coaches, and athletes. Find some media that will speak to you as an individual and run wild with it!

The last tip is to think about your competition and use them for motivation. Think about last year's rivalry games and how much emotion you had running through you in that. Now is the time to work for those big games. Think about all of last year's big losses and the pain of losing. Work hard now and the game will be easier. Your work will pay off. But you must get better today. Your competition is training today, and they are training hard. Make it your personal mission to outwork them. Be better than them today. Be better than them tomorrow. When you play them in season, you still be better. You cannot win a championship in the off season, but you sure can lose it with poor training effort. Make today's practice or workout the best ever. Get stronger, get faster, get better because your competition is working to be better than you and it is your job not to let that happen.

Everyone needs to find their own workout motivation to be great. People struggle with motivation, it happens to all. Just plan out a strategy that will make you a success in staying strict with your training schedule. Creating your own motivation and pushing yourself to the next level will be easier than you thought. Go for an extra lap, increase the weight, push the intensity. Become great today.

Joe Batista
- Joe Batista is a certified strength coach through the NSCA with a Precision Nutrition Level 1 certification. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology from Cal State Fullerton. While attending Fullerton, he also completed an EMT program, which gave him a better understanding of the human
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